WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans have no clear idea who will be U.S. House speaker, leaving an unprecedented power vacuum in Congress and severely limiting America’s ability to quickly respond to the crisis in Israel — or any number of other problems at home or abroad.

On Monday, the ousted former speaker, Kevin McCarthy, quickly jumped into the void, bitterly criticizing President Joe Biden’s administration over the strength of its defense of Israel and positioning himself as a de facto Republican leader even though his colleagues toppled him from power.

But it’s not at all clear if McCarthy could seriously make a comeback — or if one of the other Republicans seeking the gavel, Steve Scalise or Jim Jordan, can be elected speaker as their majority stumbles into infighting. House Republicans are scheduled to meet behind closed doors Monday evening to try to regain control of their majority ahead of possible speaker votes this week.

“Whether I’m speaker or not … I can lead in any position I’m in,” McCarthy, R-Calif., said at the Capitol.

The upheaval in the House puts the U.S. Congress at a crossroads during a time of crisis, the first time in history it has booted a speaker from power, operating without a constitutional officer, second in line to the presidency. House business, and with it most congressional action, has come to a standstill.

It’s not at all clear what, if anything, the Congress can do with only an interim leader. At risk is immediate aid to Israel along with passage of a resolution that would show U.S. support for Israel and condemnation of Hamas for the attack as the region is now engulfed in war.

And there are broader demands on Congress, including Ukraine’s requests for aid as it fights Russia and the need to fund the U.S. government again by Nov. 17 or risk a federal shutdown. The Senate meanwhile is also out of session, on recess until next week.

“Does anybody have the votes? No,” said Rep. Mike Lawler of New York, a centrist Republican pushing for McCarthy to be reinstated as speaker.

Republicans were scheduled to meet privately Monday evening as they assessed the path forward after McCarthy’s historic ouster by a handful of hardline Republicans led by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla.

Gaetz has said on social media there are “two great men” running for speaker, indicating he could support either Scalise or Jordan.

But neither Scalise, the majority leader who is the second-ranking Republican in the House, nor Jordan, who is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee and backed by Donald Trump, appears to have the votes needed to secure the majority vote.

Both Republicans who have eyed the speaker’s gavel for some time come with political strengths, but also baggage that leaves colleagues split and skeptical.

Scalise is battling blood cancer, and is seen by a hero among colleagues for having survived severe injuries from a mass shooting during a congressional baseball game practice in 2017. But the Louisiana Republican had apologized in 2014 after he was found to have addressed a white supremacist group in 2002 founded by a former Ku Klux Klan leader. Scalise said he didn’t know of the group’s racial views.

Jordan is a high-profile political firebrand known for his close alliance with Trump, particularly when the then-president was working to overturn the results of the 2020 election, leading to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Some years ago, Jordan and his office denied allegations from former wrestlers during his time as an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University who accused him of knowing about claims they were inappropriately groped by an Ohio doctor. Jordan and his office have said he was never aware of any abuse.

“House Republicans need to unite and show the country that we’re fighting for them,” Jordan said Sunday on Fox News.

The House Republicans hold just a slim majority and they are considering rules changes to avoid another spectacle electing a new speaker, like the 15 rounds it took McCarthy in January to seize the gavel when Gaetz and others first blocked him at the start of the year.

While the full House ultimately votes on the new speaker, the position usually falls to a person from the party with the House majority.

One idea is to require the candidate for House speaker to reach the 218 majority threshold during internal voting behind closed doors before the Republicans bring the vote up publicly on the House floor.

Another idea is to change the rule that allows a single lawmaker to make a “motion to vacate” the office — which is the rare procedural tool Gaetz used to force a snap vote that ousted McCarthy. In previous years, it required more the one lawmaker to make the motion.

But the evening meeting was expected to be long on infighting and short on solutions as Republicans reeled from the chaos that has thrown their majority into grave turmoil.

Democrats so far reject both Scalise and Jordan, and are almost certain to vote against either Republican. McCarthy’s ouster came with the help of Democrats, who voiced their disdain for the speaker and joined with eight Republicans to oust him.

For now, no consensus candidate who could bridge both parties seems at all within reach.

Meantime, Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., has been named as speaker pro tempore, a position created in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to ensure the continuity of government in Washington.

The rules around the temporary speaker position have been untested before, though they appear to indicate the main power in the role is to ensure the election of a new speaker.

But if House Republicans are unable to quickly agree on a speaker, McHenry could be in the position for some time.

Any moves McHenry makes in the temporary position have the potential to become precedent-setting for the House. The North Carolina Republican is viewed as a serious legislator, with nearly 20 years in office, even though his first act was to boot Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi from her private office at the Capitol.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — As the Senate marches ahead with a bipartisan approach to prevent a government shutdown, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is back to square one — asking his hard-right Republicans to do what they have said they would never do: approve their own temporary House measure to keep the government open.

The Republican speaker laid out his strategy Wednesday behind closed doors, urging his unruly Republican majority to work together. He set up a test vote for Friday, one day before Saturday’s shutdown deadline, on a far-right bill. It would slash federal spending by 8% from many agencies and toughen border security but has been rejected by Democrats and his own right-flank Republicans.

“I want to solve the problem,” McCarthy told reporters afterward at the Capitol.

But pressed on how he would pass a partisan Republican spending plan that even his own right flank doesn’t want, McCarthy had few answers. He rejected outright the Senate’s bipartisan bill, which would fund the government to Nov. 17, adding $6 billion for Ukraine and $6 billion for U.S. disaster relief while talks continue. Instead, he insisted, as he often does, that he would never quit trying.

Congress is at a crossroads days before a disruptive federal shutdown that would halt paychecks for millions of federal workers, leave 2 million active duty military troops and reservists to work without pay, close down many federal offices, and leave Americans who rely on the government in ways large and small in the lurch.

President Joe Biden in California at a meeting of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology said Wednesday he didn’t think a federal shutdown was inevitable.

“I don’t think anything is inevitable when it comes to politics,” he said.

But later at a fundraiser in San Francisco, Biden said of McCarthy: “I think that the speaker is making a choice between his speakership and American interests.”

As the Senate pushes ahead in bipartisan fashion, McCarthy is demanding that Biden meet to discuss border security measures. But the speaker has little leverage left with the White House without the power of his House majority behind him. The White House has panned his overtures for talks after McCarthy walked away from the debt deal he and Biden reached earlier this year that is now law.

On the other side of the Capitol, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer warned of the right-wing extremes that “seem to exult in shutting down government.”

The Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell was in rare agreement with the Democratic leader, urging his House colleagues to consider the Senate’s stopgap approach, known as a continuing resolution, or CR, and move off the shutdown strategy.

McConnell said that he, too, would like to do something about the “Democrats’ reckless spending” and boost border security. But he said, “these important discussions cannot progress” if the functions of government “end up being taken hostage.”

When McConnell mentioned a vote against the bill would mean voting against pay for border patrol agents and others, it sparked a response from Biden on social media.

“You know, I agree with Mitch here. Why the House Republicans would want to defund Border Patrol is beyond me,” Biden wrote.

With the Senate expected to spend the rest of this week working to pass its bill over the objections of Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and others on the right flank. Like their House colleagues, the conservative senators want to halt aid to Ukraine and push for steeper spending cuts, all action in Congress is crushing toward a last minute deadline.

The federal government would begin to shut down if funding is not secured by Sunday, Oct. 1, the start of the new fiscal year.

A new economic assessment from Goldman Sachs estimated a federal shutdown would subtract 0.2 percent points from fourth-quarter GDP growth each week it continues, according to a report issued Wednesday.

Running out of options, McCarthy revived the border security package he first tried to attach to a temporary government funding bill earlier this month. But he still faces a handful of hard-right holdouts led by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who say they won’t vote for any CR, denying a majority for passage.

It’s late in the process to be pushing the border security provisions now, as McCarthy tries to salvage the strategy. He is seeking to shift blame to Biden and Democrats for not engaging in an immigration debate about the record flow of migrants at the Southern border with Mexico.

Facing holdouts in his own ranks, McCarthy is trying to cajole his hard-right members who have refused to vote for any temporary spending bill — even with the border provisions. He told reporters, “I don’t understand where somebody would want to stand with President Biden on keeping an open border and not keep government open.”

The holdouts are determined to force the House to debate and pass all 12 individual funding bills for all the various government agencies. It’s a grinding weeks-long process with no guarantee the bills will even pass with days to go before a shutdown.

“If that means we close and we shut down, that’s what we’re going do,” said Rep. Andy Ogles, a Tennessee Republican who wants the House to vote on all 12 bills, as he exited the morning Republican meeting.

On Wednesday the House slogged through debate over four of those bills — to fund Defense, Homeland Security, Agriculture and State and Foreign Operations.

One amendment to gut $300 million for Ukraine was backed by 104 Republicans, more than ever as resistance to war support grows, even though it failed. Another from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to cut the Defense Secretary’s salary to $1 was approved without dissent.

Lawmakers are prepared to work into the weekend, but one leading Republican, Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas, said he believed Congress was headed towards a government shutdown.

“Somebody is going to have to flinch or break, or there will have to be something negotiated,” he said.

But the hard-right is making to oust McCarthy if he joins with Democrats and Womack, who is not among the holdouts, explained such a move could be “problematic for the speaker.”

While the White House has said it’s up to McCarthy and the House Republicans to “fix” the problem they have created, Biden’s chief rival in the 2024 election, Donald Trump, is urging the right flank to fight for steep spending cuts. If Republicans don’t get what they want, Trump the former president says, they should “shut it down.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Facing fresh challenges to his leadership, Speaker Kevin McCarthy is trying to accomplish what at times seems impossible — working furiously to convince House Republicans to come together and pass a conservative bill to keep the federal government open.

It’s a nearly futile exercise that could help McCarthy keep his job, but has little chance of actually preventing a federal shutdown. Whatever House Republicans come up with is nearly certain to be rejected by the Senate, where Democrats and most Republicans want to fund the government.

In one dramatic sign of defeat Tuesday, House Republicans were even voting against their own defense bill. During a rowdy afternoon vote, the usually popular bill was turned back from consideration, 212-214, after five hard-right conservatives helped sink it. They want to see an overall plan from McCarthy.

McCarthy simply walked off the House floor. “Look, the one thing you’re going to learn about me: I like a challenge — I don’t like this big a challenge — but we’re just gonna keep doing it until we can make it,” McCarthy told reporters.

With time dwindling, Congress faces a Sept. 30 deadline to pass the broader government funding legislation and get a bill to President Joe Biden’s desk to become law. Otherwise, the U.S. faces massive federal government closures and disruptions. Plans for another vote Tuesday to advance the overall spending bill were shelved.

“The ball’s in Kevin’s court,” said Republican Rep. Ralph Norman of the Freedom Caucus.

The latest House government funding proposal, a compromise between members of the hard-right Freedom Caucus and the more pragmatic Main Street conservatives, was almost dead on arrival, left sputtering even after McCarthy loaded it up with spending cuts and Republican priorities in a border security package.

Behind closed doors Tuesday, the speaker was trying to stress the political repercussions of a government shutdown to Republicans, warning them that no party wins with a closure.

Unlike last week when an angry and frustrated McCarthy unleashed foul language on his colleagues, he tried a different tack when addressing his members privately in the Capitol basement.

Appearing cool, calm and collected, McCarthy cast the funding plan as just a proposal and left time for rank-and-file members to debate, according to Republicans familiar with the meeting.

Still, one Republican after another rose to tell McCarthy that the current plan would not have their votes. With a slim majority, he needs almost every Republican on board.

Rep. Stephanie Bice, R-Okla., one of the negotiators for the Main Street group, urged her colleagues later to not let the “perfect be the enemy of the good.”

The showdown over the usually popular defense bill shows the difficulty ahead — it was the second time McCarthy had tried to advance the measure after he abruptly withdrew it from consideration last week.

The attempt to soothe tensions among Republicans comes as tempers are flaring and as big personalities try to seize the upper hand — some trying to lead and others hoping to disrupt any plans for compromise.

Florida’s two leading conservatives, Matt Gaetz and newcomer Byron Donalds, are sniping in the halls and across social media, as Gaetz criticizes the deal Donalds and others struck as insufficiently conservative.

And freshmen Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., pointedly attacked McCarthy as a “weak speaker.”

One seasoned lawmaker Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., warned the infighting could derail the House GOP, much the way it did for past speakers like John Boehner and Paul Ryan. Both retired earlier than expected amid constant threats of ousters.

Womack said he fears there is a “larger fight” brewing “that is more of a personality nature because of the conflict between certain members and the speaker.”

The monthlong funding package that McCarthy is pushing would impose steep spending cuts of more than 8% on many government services, while sparing defense and veterans accounts. It would last for 31 days in hopes of giving House Republicans time to approve the more traditional government funding bills.

The White House issued a memo detailing cuts from the Republican plan, saying it would mean fewer border patrol agents, school teacher aids, Meals on Wheels for seniors and Head Start slots for children.

“Extreme House Republicans are playing partisan games with peoples’ lives and marching our country toward a government shutdown,” the White House said.

Across the Capitol, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer warned of the steep cuts Republicans are planning with their “cruel” and “reckless” spending plan.

At its core, House Republicans are trying to undo the deal McCarthy reached with Biden earlier this year to set federal funding levels as part of the debt ceiling fight. Conservatives rejected that measure then, even though it was approved and signed into law, and they are trying to dismantle it now.

But House Republicans are late to the effort, with time running short to act. Whatever bills they pass are certain to run aground in the Senate, where bipartisan groups of senators have already started approving their own funding bills, some at levels higher than the Biden-McCarthy agreement.

The roughly dozen Republicans who have voiced displeasure at McCarthy’s proposal see the current impasse as a make-or-break moment to hold the speaker to commitments to drastically cut topline government spending.

“If my party is not going to stand up, what is the right thing to do?” said Spartz. “No matter how hard, I don’t think anyone else will.”

When Spartz was asked whether she would support an effort to oust McCarthy, she said she was “open to everything.”

But Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, who helped draft the proposal, all but dared his fellow Freedom Caucus members and other “so-called conservative colleagues” to reject it — particularly its “dream bill” provisions for dealing with the U.S. border with Mexico.

“If my conservative colleagues want to vote against that, go explain that,” Roy said.

The holdouts want steeper cuts that would adhere to the $1.47 trillion for annual discretionary funding they had initially advanced earlier this year to raise the nation’s debt limit.

One seasoned lawmaker, Republican Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho, warned of pain ahead for Americans if the government shuts down.

“It would be disastrous,” he said. “I’ve never seen a time when a shutdown is good policy or good politics.”

Simpson suggested it was time for McCarthy to reach out to Democrats to strike a bipartisan deal.

But that would almost certainly lead McCarthy’s right-flank to try to hold a vote to oust him from the speaker’s job.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is a man who stays in motion — enthusiastically greeting tourists at the Capitol, dashing overseas last week to the G7 summit of industrial world leaders, raising funds back home to elect fellow Republicans to the House majority.

But beneath the whirlwind of activity is a stubborn standstill, an imbalance of power between the far-right Republicans who hoisted McCarthy to the speaker’s role yet threaten his own ability to lead the House.

It’s a political standoff that will be tested anew as the House returns this week from a long summer recess and McCarthy faces a collision course of difficult challenges — seeking to avoid a government shutdown, support Ukraine in the war and launch an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

“They’ve got some really heavy lifting ahead,” said the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, John Thune, of South Dakota.

McCarthy, of California, is going to “have his hands full trying to figure out how to navigate and execute,” he said.

Congress has been here before, as has McCarthy in his nearly two decades in office, but the stakes are ever higher, with Republicans powered by an increasingly hard-right faction that is refusing to allow business as usual in Washington.

With former President Donald Trump’s backing, McCarthy’s right-flank pushed him into the speaker’s office at the start of the year only after he agreed to a long list of conservative demands — including the ability to call a quick vote to “vacate the chair” and remove him from office.

That threat of an abrupt ouster hovers over McCarthy’s every move, especially now.

To start, Congress faces a deadline to fund the government by the end of the month, or risk a potentially devastating federal shutdown. There’s just 11 working days for Congress to act once the House resumes Tuesday.

Facing a backlash from conservatives who want to slash government funding, McCarthy may be able to ease the way by turning to another hard-right priority, launching a Biden impeachment inquiry over the business dealings of the president’s son, Hunter Biden.

For McCarthy, running the two tracks — a government funding process alongside an impeachment drive — is an unusual and politically fraught undertaking.

But starting a formal impeachment inquiry into Biden could help to appease Republican allies of Trump, who has emerged as the GOP frontrunner to confront Biden in the 2024 election for the White House.

“He’s being squeezed,” Brad Woodhouse, a veteran Democratic operative, said of McCarthy. Woodhouse is now a senior adviser to the Congressional Integrity Project, which is preparing to criticize Republicans over the Biden impeachment.

The White House has said Biden is not involved in his son’s business dealings.

But Trump’s allies among House Republicans are working furiously to unearth any links between Biden and his son’s business as they portray Hunter Biden as trading on the family name for financial enrichment and work to erode public support for the president ahead of the presidential election.

Republicans have not yet been able to produce evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden.

White House spokesman Ian Sams said, “Speaker McCarthy shouldn’t cave to the extreme, far-right members who are threatening to shut down the government unless they get a baseless, evidence-free impeachment of President Biden. The consequences for the American people are too serious.”

Meanwhile, what should have been a fairly prescribed process to fund the government after McCarthy and Biden negotiated a more than $1 trillion deal earlier this summer over the debt limit appears to be falling apart. Even a stopgap measure to simply keep government funding at existing levels for a few months while Congress tries to finish the spending bills is a nonstarter for McCarthy’s right flank.

Conservatives powered by the House Freedom Caucus are insisting federal spending is rolled back to 2022 levels and they want to add other priorities to the legislation.

If not, they say they will oppose a temporary measure, called a continuing resolution, or CR, to keep government running.

“We must rein in the reckless inflationary spending, and the out-of-control federal bureaucracy it funds,” the Freedom Caucus wrote in a statement at the end of August.

With command of dozens of votes, the hard right can deny McCarthy the support he needs to pass a Republican bill on its own. But relying on Democrats for votes would bring other problems for McCarthy if he is seen as disloyal to his ranks.

The conservatives want to beef up border security and address what Republicans deride as the “weaponization” of the Justice Department’s prosecutions, including of those charged in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. They also want to end what they call the Pentagon’s “woke” policies as the Defense Department tries to provide diversity, equity and inclusion to service personnel.

Signaling the hard road ahead, Trump-ally Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., mockingly reposted one of McCarthy’s recent videos welcoming tourists at the Capitol.

“Kevin thinking this was the video we needed at this moment is depressingly revealing,” Gaetz said on social media.

“We need a SPEAKER not a GREETER.”

Congress also has a pending request from the White House to provide an additional $40 billion on three fronts — some $21 billion in military and humanitarian relief for Ukraine as it battles the Russian invasion; $12 billion to replenish federal disaster aids after floods, fires and other problems, including to curb the flow of deadly fentanyl at the southern U.S. border with Mexico.

McCarthy has vowed there won’t be any “blank check” for Ukraine as he works to appease skeptical Republicans who want to end U.S. involvement in overseas affairs, particularly involving Russia.

While the shutdown is the more pressing problem for McCarthy, the Biden impeachment inquiry is his bigger political gamble.

McCarthy has signaled an impeachment inquiry is coming. But there is “no date circled on the calendar,” said a person familiar with his thinking and granted anonymity to discuss it.

Not all House Republicans are eager for impeachment proceedings. “We can waste our time on issues that are not important, or we can focus on issues that are,” Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., said Sunday on MSNBC’s “Inside with Jen Psaki.”

Trump faces his own more serious charges of wrongdoing, including the federal indictments over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election he lost to Biden and his refusal to return classified documents stored at his Mar-a-Lago estate. He has been indicted four times this year.

Watching from the Senate, which has been working to pass all 12 of the regular bills needed to fund government operations through committees ahead of floor votes starting next week, Republicans hope cooler heads in the House will prevail on all fronts.

Several Republicans have made no secret of their disinterest in impeachment proceedings against Biden.

And GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski said those who don’t think a federal shutdown of government operations is a big deal ought to visit her state of Alaska and see “real life.”

During a previous government shutdown, Murkowski said crab fisherman couldn’t get out in the water because federal permits could not be issued.

“You know, we’ve got a lot of things going on here in the Congress right now,” she said. “So the House is going to have to sort through their priorities and hopefully, they’re going to be priorities that are in the best interests of the operations of good governance.”

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Washington (AP) — Congressional leaders are pitching a stopgap government funding package to avoid a federal shutdown after next month, acknowledging the House and Senate are nowhere near agreement on spending levels to keep federal operations running.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy raised the idea of a months-long funding package, known as a continuing resolution, to House Republicans on a members-only call Monday evening, according to those familiar with the private session and granted anonymity to discuss it.

On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the two leaders had spoken about such a temporary measure. It would extend federal funding operations into December to allow more time to work on the annual spending bills.

“I thought it was a good thing that he recognized that we need a CR,” Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters on a call.

“We hope that our House Republicans will realize that any funding resolution has to be bipartisan or they will risk shutting down the government,” he said.

A stopgap measure that would keep government offices running past the Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year is a typical strategy while the Republican-held House and Democrat-held Senate try to iron out a long-term budget agreement. The government’s new fiscal year begins on Oct. 1, when funding approval is needed to avert closures of federal offices.

But this year, the task may prove more politically difficult. McCarthy will need to win over a large portion of his Republican colleagues to pass the stopgap bill or risk political blowback from staunch conservatives if he leaves them behind and cuts a bipartisan deal with Democrats.

Conservatives, including many from the House Freedom Caucus, are usually loathe to get behind short-term funding measures as they push for steeper spending cuts, using the threat of a shutdown as leverage.

Foretelling the political dynamics ahead, many in Congress are bracing for a shutdown.

“It’s clear President Biden and Speaker McCarthy want a government shutdown, so that’s what Congress will do after we return in September. Everyone should plan accordingly,” Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, shortly after the Monday Republican call.

Democrats alongside President Joe Biden don’t necessarily want a shutdown, but they would be quick to blame Republicans for instigating it — arguing that Republicans are the ones driving for spending reductions.

All sides had agreed to budget levels during the recent debt ceiling negotiations when Biden and McCarthy struck a deal that established topline spending levels. But McCarthy’s GOP majority rejects those amounts.

White House Deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton was asked Tuesday on Air Force One if Biden is worried about a government shutdown.

“We worked in good faith to negotiate a bipartisan budget agreement a couple of months ago,” Dalton said.

“We’ve upheld our end of the bargain. They’ve upheld theirs, so far. We can expect that to continue.”

The White House had no immediate comment on whether Biden would sign a short-term resolution.

“We don’t believe that there’s any reason we should have to have a government shutdown, that congressional Republicans should bring us to that point,” Dalton said. “We think that we can work together to meet the needs of our country and the urgent needs that we’ve put forward.”

Along with deeper spending reductions, House Freedom Caucus members have also pushed to tie the government’s budget to conservative policy priorities on immigration and security at the U.S. border with Mexico, as well as at the Department of Justice.

Some Freedom Caucus members have embraced the idea of a government work stoppage to force lower spending, though many Republicans disagree with that approach.

Republican Rep. David Joyce, who sits on the Appropriations Committee and oversees its subcommittee on Homeland Security, said in a statement, “Republicans must come together to advance these bills because we cannot risk a government shutdown. When we shut down our government, we communicate to our adversaries that America is vulnerable and threaten the security of our nation.”

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President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy reached final agreement Sunday on a deal to raise the nation’s debt ceiling and worked to ensure enough Republican and Democratic votes to pass the measure in the coming week.

The Democratic president and Republican speaker spoke with each other Sunday evening as negotiators rushed to draft the bill text so lawmakers can review compromises that neither the hard-right or left flank is likely to support. Instead, the leaders are working to gather backing from the political middle as Congress hurries toward votes before a June 5 deadline to avert a damaging federal default.

“Good news,” Biden declared Sunday evening at the White House.

“The agreement prevents the worst possible crisis, a default, for the first time in our nation’s history,” he said. “Takes the threat of a catastrophic default off the table.”

The president urged both parties in Congress to come together for swift passage. “The speaker and I made clear from the start that the only way forward was a bipartisan agreement,” he said.

The compromise announced late Saturday includes spending cuts but risks angering some lawmakers as they take a closer look at the concessions. Biden told reporters at the White House upon his return from Delaware that he was confident the plan will make it to his desk.

McCarthy, too, was confident in remarks at the Capitol: “At the end of the day, people can look together to be able to pass this.”

The days ahead will determine whether Washington is again able to narrowly avoid a default on U.S. debt, as it has done many times before, or whether the global economy enters a potential crisis.

In the United States, a default could cause financial markets to freeze up and spark an international financial crisis. Analysts say millions of jobs would vanish, borrowing and unemployment rates would jump, and a stock-market plunge could erase trillions of dollars in household wealth. It would all but shatter the $24 trillion market for Treasury debt.

Anxious retirees and others were already making contingency plans for missed checks, with the next Social Security payments due soon as the world watches American leadership at stake.

McCarthy and his negotiators portrayed the deal as delivering for Republicans though it fell well short of the sweeping spending cuts they sought. Top White House officials were briefing Democratic lawmakers and phoning some directly to try to shore up support.

As Sunday dragged on, negotiators labored to write the bill text and lawmakers raised questions.

McCarthy told reporters at the Capitol on Sunday that the agreement “doesn’t get everything everybody wanted,” but that was to be expected in a divided government. Privately, he told lawmakers on a conference call that Democrats “got nothing” they wanted.

A White House statement from the president, issued after Biden and McCarthy spoke by phone Saturday evening and an agreement in principle followed, said the deal “prevents what could have been a catastrophic default.”

Support from both parties will be needed to win congressional approval before a projected June 5 government default on U.S. debts. Lawmakers are not expected to return to work from the Memorial Day weekend before Tuesday, at the earliest, and McCarthy has promised lawmakers he will abide by the rule to post any bill for 72 hours before voting.

Negotiators agreed to some Republican demands for increased work requirements for recipients of food stamps that House Democrats had called a nonstarter.

With the outlines of an agreement in place, the legislative package could be drafted and shared with lawmakers in time for House votes as soon as Wednesday, and later in the coming week in the Senate.

Central to the compromise is a two-year budget deal that would essentially hold spending flat for 2024, while boosting it for defense and veterans, and capping increases at 1% for 2025. That’s alongside raising the debt limit for two years, pushing the volatile political issue past the next presidential election.

Driving hard to impose tougher work requirements on government aid recipients, Republicans achieved some of what they wanted. It ensures people ages 49 to 54 with food stamp aid would have to meet work requirements if they are able-bodied and without dependents. Biden was able to secure waivers for veterans and homeless people.

The deal puts in place changes in the landmark National Environmental Policy Act designating “a single lead agency” to develop environmental reviews, in hopes of streamlining the process.

It halts some funds to hire new Internal Revenue Service agents as Republicans demanded, and rescinds some $30 billion for coronavirus relief, keeping $5 billion for developing the next generation of COVID-19 vaccines.

The deal came together after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Congress that the United States could default on its debt obligations by June 5 — four days later than previously estimated — if lawmakers did not act in time. Lifting the nation’s debt limit, now at $31 trillion, allows more borrowing to pay bills already insurred.

McCarthy commands only a slim Republican majority in the House, where hard-right conservatives may resist any deal as insufficient as they try to slash spending. By compromising with Democrats, he risks losing support from his own members, setting up a career-challenging moment for the new speaker.

“I think you’re going to get a majority of Republicans voting for this bill,” McCarthy said on “Fox News Sunday,” adding that because Biden backed it, “I think there’s going to be a lot of Democrats that will vote for it, too.”

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that he expected there will be Democratic support but he declined to provide a number. Asked whether he could guarantee there would not be a default, he said, “Yes.”

A 100-strong group of moderates in the New Democratic Coalition gave a crucial nod of support on Sunday, saying in a statement it was confident that Biden and his team “delivered a viable, bipartisan solution to end this crisis” and were working to ensure the agreement would receive support from both parties.

The coalition could provide enough support for McCarthy to make up for members in the right flank of his party who have expressed opposition before the bill’s wording was even released.

It also takes pressure off Biden, facing criticism from progressives for giving into what they call hostage-taking by Republicans.

Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington state, who leads the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told CBS that the White House and Jeffries should worry about whether caucus members will support the agreement.

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Price reported from New York. Associated Press writers Seung Min Kim and Stephen Groves and AP White House Correspondent Zeke Miller contributed to this report.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Days from a deadline, President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy are narrowing in on a two-year budget deal aiming to curb federal deficits in exchange for lifting the nation’s debt ceiling and staving off an economically devastating government default.

The Democratic president and Republican speaker hope to strike a budget compromise this weekend. With Republicans driving for steep cuts, the two sides have been unable to agree to spending levels for 2024 and 2025. Any deal would need to be a political compromise, with support from both Democrats and Republicans to pass the divided Congress.

But the budget flow isn’t the only hang-up.

A person familiar with the talks said the two sides are “dug in” on whether or not to agree to Republican demands to impose stiffer work requirements on people who receive government food stamps, cash assistance and health care aid, some of the most vulnerable Americans.

Yet both Biden and McCarthy expressed optimism heading into the weekend that the gulf between their positions could be bridged. A two-year deal would raise the debt limit for that time, past the 2024 presidential election.

“We knew this would not be easy,” McCarthy, R-Calif., said as he left the Capitol for the evening Thursday.

McCarthy said, “It’s hard, but we’re working and we’re going to continue to work until we get this done.”

House Republicans have pushed the issue to the brink, displaying risky political bravado in leaving town for the Memorial Day holiday. The U.S. could face an unprecedented default as soon as June 1, hurling the global economy into chaos.

In remarks at the White House, Biden said, “It’s about competing versions of America.”

“The only way to move forward is with a bipartisan agreement,” Biden said Thursday. “And I believe we’ll come to an agreement that allows us to move forward and protects the hardworking Americans of this country.”

Lawmakers are tentatively not expected back at work until Tuesday, just two days from the early June deadline when Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said the U.S. could start running out of cash to pay its bills and face a federal default.

Biden will also be away this weekend, departing Friday for the presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland, and Sunday for his home in Wilmington, Delaware. The Senate is on recess and will be until after Memorial Day.

Meanwhile, Fitch Ratings agency placed the United States’ AAA credit on “ratings watch negative,” warning of a possible downgrade.

Weeks of negotiations between Republicans and the White House have failed to produce a deal — in part because the Biden administration resisted negotiating with McCarthy over the debt limit, arguing that the country’s full faith and credit should not be used as leverage to extract other partisan priorities.

The White House has offered to freeze next year’s 2024 spending at current levels and restrict 2025 spending, but the Republican leader says that’s not enough.

“We have to spend less than we spent last year. That is the starting point,” said McCarthy.

One idea is to set those topline budget numbers but then add a “snap-back” provision that enforces the cuts if Congress is unable during its annual appropriations process to meet the new goals.

On work requirements for the aid recipients, the White House is particularly resisting measures that would drive Americans into poverty or take their health care, said the person familiar with the talks, who was granted anonymity to describe behind-closed-door discussions.

On the Republican demand to rescind money for the Internal Revenue Service, it’s still an “open issue” whether the sides will compromise by allowing the funding to be pushed back into other domestic programs, the person said.

Pressure is bearing down on McCarthy from the House’s right flank not to give in to any deal, even if it means blowing past the June 1 deadline.

“Let’s hold the line,” said Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, a Freedom Caucus member.

McCarthy said Donald Trump, the former president who is again running for office, told him, “Make sure you get a good agreement.”

Failure to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, now at $31 trillion, to pay America’s already incurred bills would risk a potentially chaotic federal default. Anxious retirees and social service groups are among those already making default contingency plans.

Even if negotiators strike a deal in coming days, McCarthy has promised lawmakers he will abide by the rule to post any bill for 72 hours before voting — now likely Tuesday or even Wednesday. The Democratic-held Senate has vowed to move quickly to send the package to Biden’s desk, right before next Thursday’s possible deadline.

In one potential development, Republicans may be easing their demand to boost defense spending, instead offering to keep it at levels the Biden administration proposed, according to another person familiar with the talks.

The teams are also eyeing a proposal to boost energy transmission line development from Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., that would facilitate the buildout of an interregional power grid, according to a person familiar with that draft. Those two people were also granted anonymity to discuss the private negotiations.

The White House has continued to argue that deficits can be reduced by ending tax breaks for wealthier households and some corporations, but McCarthy said he told the president as early as their February meeting that raising revenue from tax hikes was off the table.

While Biden has ruled out, for now, invoking the 14th Amendment to raise the debt limit on his own, Democrats in the House announced they have all signed on to a legislative “discharge” process that would force a debt ceiling vote. But they need five Republicans to break with their party and tip the majority to set the plan forward.

They are all but certain to claw back some $30 billion in unspent COVID-19 funds now that the pandemic emergency has officially been lifted.

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Associated Press writers Chris Megerian, Josh Boak, Zeke Miller and Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House and Congress could strike a deal to raise the debt ceiling in exchange for budget cuts. Or they could agree to a stopgap measure to keep paying the nation’s bills while negotiations continue. They also could let the negotiations unravel, sending the economy into chaos.

As President Joe Biden meets Tuesday with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and other congressional leaders for the first time over the debt ceiling crisis, the options for easing out of the standoff are many.

But the political incentive for compromise is harder to come by. There’s no easy endgame ahead of a June 1 deadline to raise the debt ceiling or risk defaulting on the nation’s $31 trillion in debt.

“It’s Congress’ constitutional duty to act to prevent default,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday. “That’s what the president is going to be very clear about.”

At Tuesday’s first meeting, it’s extremely unlikely there will be any quick resolution. Biden and the big four congressional leaders of the House and Senate will convene at the White House with neither side yet signaling a willingness to budge off its opening position.

Biden wants Congress to simply raise the debt limit without any strings attached, while Republicans led by McCarthy are insisting on budget cuts in exchange for any votes to allow more borrowing to pay the nation’s bills.

More likely, Democratic president Biden and Republican House speaker McCarthy will at least be able to set aside their differences enough to launch a process for negotiations that could begin to form the contours of a deal to avert a true debt ceiling crisis.

But with tensions high and the outcome uncertain, some lawmakers are considering unprecedented proposals, even one that would allow Biden to bypass Congress, invoking his responsibilities under the 14th Amendment to simply raise the nation’s debt limit on his own. That would be certain to face a court challenge.

Though the endgame is uncertain, the political terrain is familiar for the White House and Congress. The once routine vote to raise the debt ceiling has increasingly been wielded as powerful political leverage to extract policy priorities that otherwise would not be likely to become law.

Republicans have put down their opening bid — a sweeping House-passed proposal that would slash $4.8 trillion off the federal budget over a decade by rolling back spending to fiscal 2022 levels and capping future spending increases at 1% a year, resulting in steep cuts to programs and services.

The Republicans refuse to simply raise the debt limit on its own, and are demanding budget cuts and other party priorities. The House Republican-passed bill would drop millions of Americans from health care, food stamps and cash assistance programs by imposing additional work requirements that many would be unable to meet. And it would undo much of Biden’s climate change agenda.

Senate Republicans are backing up their House Republican colleagues, announcing they will not advance “any bill that raises the debt ceiling without substantive spending and budget reforms.”

In a letter from Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and signed by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, the 43 GOP senators said they are “united behind the House Republican conference in support of spending cuts and structural budget reform as a starting point for negotiations on the debt ceiling.”

Biden and Democrats have also dug in, refusing to debate over the debt ceiling — though they have opened the door to negotiations over spending levels as part of the regular budget process.

“We have to avoid default, period. Full stop,” the House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said over the weekend.

“We, of course, are open to having a discussion about what type of investments, what type of spending, what type of revenues are appropriate,” Jeffries said. “That’s a process that is available to us right now.”

Time is short for any deal. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said that come June 1, there may simply not be enough cash on hand to meet all of the nation’s obligations. She noted the U.S. has never defaulted on its debt.

”Every option is a bad option,” Yellen said Monday on CNBC.

The House and Senate arrive back at work Tuesday, but they are in session together just eight days before the Senate breaks for the Memorial Day recess the week of May 22 with the House set to recess the following week.

Both Biden and McCarthy have insisted they will not allow the country to default on its obligations.

What’s different about this round of talks is that it’s being led by McCarthy, debuting after his tumultuous battle to become House speaker.

To win the gavel, McCarthy made steep concessions to the hard right Freedom Caucus and other conservatives who make up his slim majority, and who can threaten to oust the speaker if he negotiates a deal they are unwilling to accept.

While Biden had a willing partner in past budget showdowns negotiating with McConnell, the Senate Republican leader is keeping a lower profile enabling McCarthy to take the lead. But the threat hanging over McCarthy from his far-right flank could leave him unwilling or unable to strike a compromise with Biden.

Congress has been known to push this issue to the brink, but it has also proven its ability to buy time, by voting for stopgap measures to allow negotiations to continue.

One solution in the weeks ahead would be for Biden and McCarthy to agree to some smaller measure of budget cuts or changes, say clawing back the unspent COVID-19 funds that Republicans have targeted, in exchange for a vote to lift the debt limit past the June 1 deadline as they keep working on a broader budget deal.

In an earlier debt ceiling showdown a decade ago, Congress agreed to set up a “super committee” tasked with coming up with bipartisan spending reductions or facing automatic cuts — an idea that has been mentioned in another form this time.

It all means that while June 1 looms as a serious deadline, it may end up being just the first of several to come — a level of fiscal uncertainty that some experts have warned could rock the economy.

To stave off a crisis, House Democrats have pushed forward a process that would force a vote on a clean debt ceiling increase they prefer. But it’s a cumbersome procedure that would be a longshot in the Senate, where Democrats have only a slim majority and need Republican support to advance most bills.

Asked about invoking the 14th Amendment proposal, Biden said in an interview Friday that he’s not there yet.

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